One – 04

[This post is from Marin’s point of view.]

Our steps echoed hollowly across the bridge and down the mall that once upon a time would have been filled with campus tours and students rushing to and from summer classes. The ruins of what had been our university stood silent and still, shrouded by the misty rain.

My heart pounded against my ribs and every inch of my body ached with the exertion of running. The choice to do it had probably been ill-advised, but I didn’t stop. I kept pace with Matt until we slowed at the top of the slope between where the library used to stand and the Shakespeare Garden, now a half-tamed tangle of flowers and weeds. There, Matt stopped and I leaned forward, hands braced against my knees, wheezing as I fought to catch my breath. He touched my shoulder, wincing.

“Sorry.”

I waved a hand, swallowing hard as I straightened with a cough. “It’s okay. I was the one who said I was okay to run.” I glanced downhill, toward the barrow, sick at heart and feeling I’d see something out of a horror flick, churned earth and half-risen bodies or worse.

Next to me, Matt took a deep breath and headed downhill. I followed, my heartbeat calming as I saw the barrow itself was intact, grass growing in thick and green with the coming of late-blooming spring and summer.

“Gods and monsters,” Matt murmured under his breath, his hand finding mine again. “I was so damned afraid of what I’d find.”

As we got closer, though, our relief became short-lived. While the wardings we’d placed on the barrow itself had protected the graves of our dead, it was clear that something had taken more than a passing interest in the site. Some of the ground was disturbed around the edges, as if someone or something had tested the ground, preparing to do something—though what, I couldn’t say.

Matt’s hand spasmed around mine and I looked at him, my brows knitting.

“They were trying to disrupt the wardings here,” he said quietly. “To get to the bodies. But why?”

He let go of my hand, slowly staring to walk around the barrow’s perimeter. I hugged my arms around myself, chewing my lower lip.

“Do you think it was Olympium, or someone else?”

“If it just looked like shovels, I’d say Olympium,” he said, staring at the disturbed ground. “But there are claw marks here, too. I just—” he broke off, shaking his head. “It could have been them, but I can’t help but feel like it was someone or something else.”

“Leviathan? One of Vammatar’s sisters?”

My brother shivered and shook his head. “I don’t know, Mar. I guess we’ll find out, right?”

“We always do,” I said, staring at the broken ground. “One way or another, we always do.”

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